‘Haf Will Be Whole!’: Brewery Smokestack Topped Off

The Jamaica Plain skyline changed Wednesday with the installation of a new feature atop the smokestack at the Brewery complex.

“The project that I proposed almost 5 years ago to have the Haf installed to the ___Fenreffer to repair this typo is coming to fruition. Very soon the Haf will be whole!” wrote Jamaica Plain artist Bob Maloney on his Instagram account, in a post that was widely shared on Facebook Tuesday.

“It was a project I came up with for an artist writing class in grad school,” Maloney wrote. “I proposed it to JPNDC who run the building. They loved the idea. I told them about the the foundation I had research and they followed through with submitting the proposal.”

The metal scaffolding, bearing the letters “Haf,” was craned into place Wednesday morning.

The Haffenreffer Brewery was established in Jamaica Plain in 1871 when, according to the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation, “Rudolf Haffenreffer buys a small brewery ‘toward Jamaica Plain, one half-hour from Boston,’ as he wrote home to his family in Germany. The Haffenreffer Brewery reigns as the queen of 24 Jamaica Plain and Roxbury breweries that draw abundant, clear water from the Stony Brook. During its peak years, the Haffenreffer Brewery employs 250 workers and brews half a million barrels of beer per year.” The Jamaica Plain Historical Society has more on the history of the brewery.

Per Wikipedia, the top of the smokestack from the old Haffenreffer Brewery has crumbled, and was partially restored to adhere to current building codes.

Maloney says the people who repaired the building’s chimney about 15 years ago fabricated the giant metal scaffolding to fit on top of the existing smokestack.

Jamaica Plain News reader Susan Scheele shared a photo of the scaffolding being moved into place Wednesday morning:

“I’ve lived in the Brewery district for over 15 years and have always wanted the smoke stack completed,” Scheele said. “Driving down Amory St. this morning I had to pull over to witness and capture the moment the stack was completed in 21st century fashion.”

Jamaica Plain News paid the smokestack a visit in the late afternoon sun:

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